Mavis Gallant Biography

Canadian writer, born in Montreal, brought up in Quebec, Ontario and the USA, before returning to Canada in 1941. She then worked with the National Film Board and became a feature writer with the Montreal Standard. During the 1950s she moved to Paris, but Canada frequently features in her writings. She has published several collections of stories, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, including The Other Paris (1956), My Heart Is Broken (1964), and From the Fifteenth District: A Novella and Eight Short Stories (1979). Home Truths (1981) includes a perceptive and revealing introduction by Gallant herself, and has three sections, on Canada, on Canadians abroad, and the six stories featuring the young woman Linnet Muir in the Montreal of the 1930s and 1940s. Two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1959) and A Fairly Good Time (1970), and the stories in Overhead in a Balloon (1985) and In Transit (1988) attest to Gallant's skill at evoking a special combination of location and memory with a poise born not from any dislocation from Canadian life and culture, but from dedication to her art. Her recent collections include The Moslem Wife and Other Stories (1993) and Across the Bridge: Nine Short Stories (1993). Gallant was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981.